So this deck stemmed from my wish to make a reasonable combo deck despite rarity restrictions. Obviously, it's a long shot to pull off the dream kill using Bloodghast, Sanguine Bond, and Blood Tribute, but since I like a challenge, and since we don't really have a lot of other great options for 1 turn kills, I thought this would be fun.

So, I set out to build around the concept and started in Sultai. The problem was that it was a) too slow, b) too inconsistent, and c) lost too easily to certain types of decks. I then decided to add a life gain component, to the already decent self discard options I had, and the spider spawning concept. This had obvious synergy with Sanguine Bond in any case, could be built around other creatures (e.g.: help with SS), and would help stall the opponent until the later turns when this deck had time to set up any of it's possible win cons - the combo, overwhelm with spiders, kill by straightforward life gain/life loss.

Finally, I realized that despite the extreme mana requirements, this deck would really benefit from additional ways to pull the combo elements back from the graveyard, so I added Warden of the Eye in. As soon as I did so, I was pretty sure I had done the right thing, because Warden brings all of the win cons back from the grave (or in a total failure of a situation, at least brings Treasured Find back).

tl;dr but read below at least

The hardest thing about playing this deck is deciding which way you will play. In the early turns you have to make a decision whether or not you are going for the combo. This should pretty much hinge on how quickly you see all of the pieces. So pay attention to what you draw, what falls into the GY, and decide which way you'd try to play.

Also, pay close attention to your mana, and you shouldn't have too much trouble - just make sure you know what you need at all times. This deck requires (as soon as possible) in order to play all of its cards, so make sure to grab the right mana with Cultivates or Wayfinders.

Have fun. :-)

Last edited by DJ0045 on Sun May 10, 2015 12:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've just spent awhile playing LegenVD's domain deck that he hasn't posted here but is on his channel. It is ridiculously fun and actually very powerful; it uses all of the domain cards in the game and is something new that I hadn't played yet. Wandering Goblin is surprisingly a beast in this deck; it was something I had thought was one of the worst cards in the game, but the fact it can be pumped multiple times combined with this deck's removal package means it won games by itself for me.

It's a domain deck so it will still lose to top tier decks reliably but in this meta, with this playerbase, it's pretty competitive. And discovering a new deck type is always fun.

I've just spent awhile playing LegenVD's domain deck that he hasn't posted here but is on his channel. It is ridiculously fun and actually very powerful; it uses all of the domain cards in the game and is something new that I hadn't played yet. Wandering Goblin is surprisingly a beast in this deck; it was something I had thought was one of the worst cards in the game, but the fact it can be pumped multiple times combined with this deck's removal package means it won games by itself for me.

It's a domain deck so it will still lose to top tier decks reliably but in this meta, with this playerbase, it's pretty competitive. And discovering a new deck type is always fun.

I've just spent awhile playing LegenVD's domain deck that he hasn't posted here but is on his channel. It is ridiculously fun and actually very powerful; it uses all of the domain cards in the game and is something new that I hadn't played yet. Wandering Goblin is surprisingly a beast in this deck; it was something I had thought was one of the worst cards in the game, but the fact it can be pumped multiple times combined with this deck's removal package means it won games by itself for me.

It's a domain deck so it will still lose to top tier decks reliably but in this meta, with this playerbase, it's pretty competitive. And discovering a new deck type is always fun.

I was bored and decided that I'd like to make a Warstorm Surge deck. First I started with Temur, then I tried Ink-Treader (blackless) where I also posted my deck, after that I tested Eon's deck and wasn't quite happy with it. In the end I started to think what cards I'd like in the deck, so here's my thought process:

Hey guys, so I put together a ridiculous warp world deck. It's obviously not competitive but I've been having a fair amount of success with it. The idea is to ramp and survive, then get warp world out and win that turn or the next. Have a go, tell me what you think.

Looks like a fun deck. Don't you want cultivate? Your curve goes from 2 > 5, and this is a 5 color deck. I think your 16 taplands should make the mana fairly reliable. I do not think 4 cloudshifts are necessary for a deck with access to warden, you do have a few fantastic cloudshift targets but I can see multiple cloudshifts in hand as being a danger.

I think I will test -1 cloudshift -1 wall of omens +2 cultivate for starters.

The lategame is pretty amazing. You have so many different win conditions that I can see why you dropped the 2nd runescarred demon. The mana works better than I expected... all hail our triland overlords.

On the other hand, there are some serious weaknesses. Most of these are a direct outgrowth of running a 5 color seance deck with a bajillion combos.

- Slow manabase. Not being able to cast your 2 drop until the 3rd turn is a very common occurrence. The trilands are doing their jobs but they slow the deck down significantly. - awkward transition between chumps and bombs. The deck goes from 1/1, 0/2, 0/4 at 1-2 mana straight to five drops (and most of the 5 drops have weak board presence for their cost). When combined with all of the taplands, it can feel like an eternity before you get to your late game. Obviously very limited control options due to this being a seance deck.- Too many "do nothing" combo cards. Lets see:4 cloudshift3 hedron crabs2 warstorm surge3 warden / 3 oracle1 craterhoof behemoth

That is 16 cards. This is kind of an arbitrary selection, there are cards I arguably should be listing and cards I arguably should exclude. My point is that you have many cards with very minimal board impact. If your deck is working on all cylinders and you cast turn 5 seance turn 6 warstorm surge it doesn't matter. But drawing cards in the wrong ratio can hurt.

So I would want to try to refine the deck in one of two ways:1. Focus on getting to the late game faster. Cultivate can speed you up two turns by ramping + guaranteeing an untapped land in your hand for crucial turns. You might also be able to get away with swapping two trilands for two basics, the net result would be significantly speeding up your deck. I would cut 3 visionaries/walls and 1 cloudshift. Cantrip creatures are nice for a deck with fewer win conditions to have a way to draw into them. They fetch you less than half a land on average. This isn't a deck where you want to stall at 4-5 mana. The synergy with seance is nice but satyr wayfinders are the prime seance creature here.

Ramp may add more functionality to cloudshift. As it is, I can't use it to save my big guys from removal because I need to cast them ASAP. As you mentioned, cloudshifting oracle is incredible, but it is difficult because of the heavy curve with no ramp and tons of taplands. If you are ahead on land drops (and have untapped lands for key plays) you can afford to do something like cast rune scarred with one mana open and then shift him in response to removal. Just for reference I played a decent amount with Eon's 4 color blackless shiftwarden deck that used warstorm surge. He had less EtB abilities but more big guys that I wanted to stick on the board. Keeping something like Wooly Thoctar or Garruk's Packleader alive is a great use of cloudshift, using it as a cantrip is not so worthwhile.

2. Add more board presence lower on the curve. There are a lot of options here... lone missionary could be good, as could guard gomozoa, as could more spider spawnings. Again you have so many powerful late game cards that the early game cantrips aren't super necessary. Pellaka wurm doesn't feel super good without ramp here, I would rather have some lifegain lower on the curve. Its amazing with seance but then again so is everything.

This is based on pretty limited testing at this point. Very fun deck and I think it is viable for the steam meta.

The lategame is pretty amazing. You have so many different win conditions that I can see why you dropped the 2nd runescarred demon. The mana works better than I expected... all hail our triland overlords.

On the other hand, there are some serious weaknesses. Most of these are a direct outgrowth of running a 5 color seance deck with a bajillion combos.

- Slow manabase. Not being able to cast your 2 drop until the 3rd turn is a very common occurrence. The trilands are doing their jobs but they slow the deck down significantly. - awkward transition between chumps and bombs. The deck goes from 1/1, 0/2, 0/4 at 1-2 mana straight to five drops (and most of the 5 drops have weak board presence for their cost). When combined with all of the taplands, it can feel like an eternity before you get to your late game. Obviously very limited control options due to this being a seance deck.- Too many "do nothing" combo cards. Lets see:4 cloudshift3 hedron crabs2 warstorm surge3 warden / 3 oracle1 craterhoof behemoth

That is 16 cards. This is kind of an arbitrary selection, there are cards I arguably should be listing and cards I arguably should exclude. My point is that you have many cards with very minimal board impact. If your deck is working on all cylinders and you cast turn 5 seance turn 6 warstorm surge it doesn't matter. But drawing cards in the wrong ratio can hurt.

So I would want to try to refine the deck in one of two ways:1. Focus on getting to the late game faster. Cultivate can speed you up two turns by ramping + guaranteeing an untapped land in your hand for crucial turns. You might also be able to get away with swapping two trilands for two basics, the net result would be significantly speeding up your deck. I would cut 3 visionaries/walls and 1 cloudshift. Cantrip creatures are nice for a deck with fewer win conditions to have a way to draw into them. They fetch you less than half a land on average. This isn't a deck where you want to stall at 4-5 mana. The synergy with seance is nice but satyr wayfinders are the prime seance creature here.

Ramp may add more functionality to cloudshift. As it is, I can't use it to save my big guys from removal because I need to cast them ASAP. As you mentioned, cloudshifting oracle is incredible, but it is difficult because of the heavy curve with no ramp and tons of taplands. If you are ahead on land drops (and have untapped lands for key plays) you can afford to do something like cast rune scarred with one mana open and then shift him in response to removal. Just for reference I played a decent amount with Eon's 4 color blackless shiftwarden deck that used warstorm surge. He had less EtB abilities but more big guys that I wanted to stick on the board. Keeping something like Wooly Thoctar or Garruk's Packleader alive is a great use of cloudshift, using it as a cantrip is not so worthwhile.

2. Add more board presence lower on the curve. There are a lot of options here... lone missionary could be good, as could guard gomozoa, as could more spider spawnings. Again you have so many powerful late game cards that the early game cantrips aren't super necessary. Pellaka wurm doesn't feel super good without ramp here, I would rather have some lifegain lower on the curve. Its amazing with seance but then again so is everything.

This is based on pretty limited testing at this point. Very fun deck and I think it is viable for the steam meta.

This is part of the reason why my ShiftWarden deck went the way it did. Running a bunch of cards like Wall of Omens and Elvish Visionary felt a bit too benign. I certainly see the point, as the cantrip creatures do a good job of cycling you into your combo pieces, which can be very beneficial for getting yourself set up and they work decently well with Cloudshift.

The problem was AFTER we had gotten things set up though. Cards like Wall of Omens and Elvish Visionary do a very good job in getting you to combo pieces like Warstorm Surge and Warden. Once you grab the combo pieces though these cards tend to take a serious hit in the value department. Once you have Surge on the table, you really don't want to be drawing into cards like Wall and Visionary, because they really don't do much for you in terms of the combo itself (Wall does 0 damage with Surge for example).

Admittedly the cantrip effect can help you cycle into more cards that actually DO function with your combo, which is nice, but consider that the more of these cantrip cards we run, the more likely we are to hit multiples (potentially off of the draw from the initial cantrip). This certainly helps to thin the deck out, but it also has the potential to slow the deck down quite a bit due to mana economy.

Lets say we have Surge on the table and draw into Wall of Omens. We cast Wall (which doesn't do anything with Surge) and cycle into Inferno Titan. This certainly isn't a bad line, but consider that if we would have just drawn into Inferno Titan (or other similarly sized bomb for Surge) to begin with we would be able to start applying pressure sooner, especially when you take into account the fact that after casting that Wall, we may not have the mana remaining available to cast that Inferno Titan (or whatever) on the same turn we cycle into it.

Hence why I went the way of things like Thoctar in my build, which are sizable threats when played early and/or without having your combo pieces available, which also happen to be sizable threats in the late game that greatly speed up the clock when you DO have your combo pieces.

Now in saying this, I will say that these cantrip creatures certainly do have more value with Seance around, and the idea of Surge+Seance is definitely an interesting concept I had yet to even consider. Good on you Auunj! This may be something I mess around with myself.

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